Every year around the week of my birthday (early February), I start to think about and pre-analyze the NCAA basketball tournament or March Madness.

This year is one of the toughest I can ever remember.

No single team has stood out to me as dominant, however, somewhere in the vicinity of 15 teams have looked like contenders.

Nowhere is this more blatantly obvious, than in the ACC.

North Carolina State was supposedly the best team on paper, but they can only beat good teams and find themselves losing to teams they are much better than (Wake Forest, Virginia, Maryland).

State is too good to be losing to Wake Forest, even if the game was played in Jeff Bzdelik’s backyard.

Duke is a solid team, but has had a lot of trouble winning on the road with losses at State and Miami.

If Rasheed Sulaimon’s 26-point outing against Maryland was a metamorphosis of him coming out of his freshman shell, then I think the Blue Devils will be fine and solid Final Four contenders with or without Ryan Kelly.

North Carolina can’t seem to find any consistency, though it’s looking better than it did early in the conference season.

So, enter the Hurricanes — yes, the Miami Hurricanes.

Miami is unbeaten in the conference and ranked No. 14 in the country.

Why? Because they have a solid head coach and senior leadership with Durand Scott and Kenny Kadji.

Even on a broader scope of the landscape of college basketball, there is chaos abound.

I still think of the ACC as the preeminent basketball conference. They have the best tradition and I believe, top-to-bottom the stiffest competition.

What I mean by that is that if you take the worst team in the ACC (Georgia Tech) and pit them against the worst team from another conference, Tech is better.

For that reason, I can’t count out the ACC when it comes to March.

I still believe that Indiana has the best overall team, but they, like everyone else, have shown vulnerabilities.

It is way too early for me to forecast a Final Four, because I do not have any idea of what kind of match-ups could take place and seedings haven’t been issued, but I can say this — the tournament should be as great as ever.

Some teams with elite talent that were in utter disarray early such as UCLA, are starting to hit their strides and showing “dark horse” potential.

I’ve studied and predicted the tournament for a long time and I expect this year to be my most tedious assignment.